58th District: Bob Morgan Defends Legislative Record, Carl Lambrecht Makes Dubious Claims
HIGHLAND PARK, IL — The two candidates for state representative in the 58th District of the Illinois House presented voters with starkly different worldviews during a candidate forum hosted last month by local chapters of the League of Women Voters.
Carl Lambrecht, 91, a Highland Park Republican, is challenging three-term incumbent State Rep. Bob Morgan, 44, a Deerfield Democrat.
During the forum, Morgan emphasized legislative accomplishments such as sponsoring the statewide assault weapons ban, making health insurance companies cover mental health care and paying down the pension backlog.
Meanwhile, Lambrecht's sometimes cryptic responses ranged from questionable claims to personal anecdotes.
"Should a judge issue an order to remove firearms and ammunition from anyone who has an order of protection issued against them?" asked moderator Jan Flapan. "If not, why not?"
"I don't know what you mean 'protection.' I suppose that means protecting other people who are threatened by that person. I would say yes," said Lambrecht, before veering off into a discussion of cannabis.
"At one time, when the time President Roosevelt made it illegal to have marijuana in 1937 — that's for the whole country. Individual states are violating the federal government's law, and after that, you have the — now when I was last involved with marijuana and its threat, it was at about 30 percent, now, it's 98 percent, and it's a very serious threat to our civilization because people can die simply by taking too much marijuana, and they become schizophrenic and other things," Lambrecht said.
"So I'm sorry to say that I agree that people shouldn't have guns for certain applications, but most of the people that I know who have guns are quite peaceful, quiet people," he added. "It's really only criminals that shouldn't have guns."
Morgan, who is a healthcare attorney who was the first statewide coordinator for Illinois' medical cannabis program before he sponsored the Protect Illinois Communities Act, pointed out that cannabis has not killed anyone, while guns are the leading cause of death for American children.
"We also have to do more to encourage safe storage of firearms. That is an incredibly important issue for our community and every community, as we see children being killed at record numbers due to guns being so accessible. We have 400 million guns in the United States and 300 million people. We have more guns than people," Morgan said. "So the reality is, we have to do more. When there's an order of protection, we need to remove that firearm. Law enforcement has to step in—not just to save that person's life, but to save everyone's life."
The candidates differed on the SAFE-T Act, which eliminated cash bail in state criminal court just over a year prior to the Sept. 26 forum , which was sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Deerfield-Lincolnshire, Highland Park-Highwood, Lake County and the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff area.
Morgan said the end of monetary bail was an incredible success, especially with regard to the detention of defendants in domestic violence cases.
"It's becoming successful because the people who are a danger to society are being detained, and the people that are not are not being detained just because they don't have the money," Morgan said.
Lambrecht said he believed the opposite.
"There are only two counties that have this — Cook County and Lake County," Lambrecht said incorrectly.
In fact, the state's attorneys of those two counties were the only ones to publicly lobby for the passage of the bill but cash bail has been eliminated statewide.
"We have a lot of people who are coming into the state from who knows where, who are criminals in the first place. They find guns, and off they go killing people," Lambrecht said. "And marijuana has killed people. You may not know about it, but they have."
Lambrecht is the owner of a Highland Park precision optics manufacturing firm and a Moraine Township GOP precinct committeeperson. He ran unsuccessfully for school board 13 years ago and was unopposed in his bid for the Republican nomination in this spring's primary.
Wearing a "Cold War Veteran" baseball cap, the only qualification he proffered during the forum was his belief in God and the Ten Commandments.
"This is a position that guarantees that I do [a] good job, it doesn't mean I always obey everything, but I try," he said.
After several digressions into communist industrial policy in unspecified foreign countries, Lambrecht spend his closing remarks explaining that he completed three years of high school, three years of university and took some graduate classes in optics and lasers.
"I went to high school and college at the same time. I never graduated from either of those institutions, but I learned what I wanted to learn, and I thought that was enough for me," he said. "It gave me the opportunity to travel to over 40 countries and see the world and understand what life is like in many different types of countries."
Both candidates were asked about the proliferation of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, which are also known as "forever chemicals" and used in various household and industrial applications. Two were designated as hazardous substances by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year and peer-reviewed studies have shown them accumulating in Lake Michigan.
Morgan said he supported looking at ways to prohibit their proliferation in water and air and ways that government can stop buying them, even though there is opposition to an outright ban.
"There are things, levers that government has to reduce the proliferation of these chemicals, and we should start immediately. We already know the ways in which plastics are infiltrating our water systems. It's a real problem that we are running the risk of being too late to address if we don't immediately take drastic actions to keep ourselves and our future generations, our children and our grandchildren, safe from these chemicals."
Lambrecht did not appear to be familiar with PFAS or microplastic pollution.
"Forever chemicals? You mentioned plastics. It depends on which plastics. Maybe you don't realize it, you have eat sausages sometimes you're eating plastics, and it doesn't seem to do anything to anyone," Lambrecht said.
"Plastic bags? we use them all over the house. I use it as packing material," he said. "I don't see any plastics going into Lake Michigan, but I suppose somebody says they are."
In fact, a Rochester Institute of Technology study published eight years ago estimated there was about 11.6 million pounds of plastic entering Lake Michigan every year.
Microplastics, defined as pieces of plastic under 5 mm, can be ingested by aquatic life and make their way into the human food chain . And while wastewater treatment plants in the region capture the majority of microplastics, some still escape, accumulating over time in the water and sediment.
A decade ago, the race for the 58th District was still relatively competitive, with Republican candidates regularly getting more than 40 percent of the vote against former State Rep. Scott Drury prior to the last round of redistricting.
Since Morgan won the seat by a solid margin in 2018, it has been a Democratic stronghold. In 2020, he ran unopposed, and in 2022, he wound up with more than 70 percent of the vote.
"We've done a lot in the last six years that I've been there. I primarily focus my work on expanding access to quality and cost-effective health care, and also leading the state's legislation on gun violence prevention," Morgan said.
"We've done incredible things with regards to balancing the state's budget, digging us out of the hole that we have been building for years and decades in Illinois, so that we can better serve those constituents that need help, so it's been a true honor to have this role," he said.
"The reason I'm running for re-election is because there's so much more to do, so many more individuals who are struggling to get by — in human services in behavioral health care access — things that we really need to work on that the state can do better," he said. "And that's what I'm running to make sure I have the opportunity to continue in Springfield and work on these issues so we can help everybody have the opportunity they deserve."
